


Cold Comfort

by Flyting



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, failing the bechdel test
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:59:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4555146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina and Belle have a little chat about love, magic, and men, while Belle is imprisoned in her castle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

Whenever Belle had imagined herself as a hero, she had never pictured it being quite this dull.

The darkness and the damp she could bear- it was rather to be expected of a dungeon, after all. And spending some time locked in a dungeon was one of those things that always seemed to happen to the heroes in her books, in between the journeying and the bouts with dragons. It was one of those things that proved they were brave and steadfast and all those other things heroes were supposed to be- that they endured captivity in the villain’s dungeon without complaint. Belle had always tried her best to be brave.

That her books never described the reality of waking repeatedly in the middle of the night, stiff from trying to catch a few fitful hours of sleep on a pallet of rags and straw- and Belle wonders if this is a usual fixture of dungeons or if her captor has a sense of humor- she could forgive. They were only fantasies after all, and no one wants to read about their heroes choking on stale bread or having to do their business in a corner.

She could tolerate the cold that crept through her thin shift and threadbare blankets, leaving her perpetually chilled to the bone. The fact that she was usually hungry, and increasingly filthy, and that the hem of her mud-stained skirts were permanently damp could be borne. Belle had never been afraid of discomfort.

What she couldn’t stand was the boredom.  
  
Alone with only her own thoughts for company, Belle had nearly been reduced to counting the pieces of straw that littered the floor to keep her sanity. She had rallied against it at first- tried to keep her spirits up by humming or singing snatches of half-remembered songs, but slowly, as the line of marks she made to track the days began to creep across the wall, she had given up and fallen silent.

She wondered if anyone knew she was here.

Belle wasn’t even entirely sure where she was herself, except that it was very well defended. Thick stone walls silenced any hint of sound from outside, and the intricate detailing on the floor, which she had at first mistaken for decoration, suggested magical defenses as well. The Queen wasn’t taking any chances, then.

She hadn’t seen another living soul since she woke up, though she could sometimes hear the rattle of armor through the narrow slit in the doorway.  Her meals appeared irregularly, and only when she was asleep- or appeared to be. Belle had tested it once she realized the pattern, feigning sleep and waiting, hoping for the rattle of a key in the lock. Even if she couldn’t slip past her jailor, though she was willing to try, it would at least comfort her to know that she hadn’t been left alone to rot.

Instead the tray had appeared in her cell by magic in a puff of purple smoke, as if her captor was determined to deny her even that small bit of human contact.

She had thrown the tray at the wall in a fit of anger, and sorely regretted it later when there wasn’t another the next time she slept.  
  
Her grumbling stomach had kept her company that day.

With nothing else to occupy it, Belle’s active mind chased itself around in maddening circles. To distract herself she conjures up half-remembered stories- spends her waking hours trying to recall every book she’s ever read. Anything to keep her thoughts at bay.

It didn’t matter. Her mind always came back to the same place. And when sleep eluded her, cold and stiff on her little pallet of straw, she replayed her last conversation with Rumplestiltskin a thousand times in her head.

She holds the memory of their first kiss- first and last- up to the light, examining it from this angle and that. Drags up every fleeting bit of conversation they ever shared, looking for some new meaning to be uncovered. As if she hopes to find some overlooked clue that will explain why he is the way he is.

She isn’t sure why she does it. It doesn’t help.

It is from these thoughts that the unexpected sound of a key in the latch distracts her. Belle pulls herself to her feet, unwilling to face whatever is in store for her lying down. She wiggles her fingers and toes to encourage the blood back into them as the door creaks open.

“It’s you,” Belle’s jaw tightens as the woman she had met on the road, the strange woman in black, glides into her cell. Her painted lips are the only splash of color against so much pale skin and dark clothing. She smiles at Belle as she approaches.

Something sharp pricks in Belle’s chest, a reminder of just how gullible she must have seemed.

“You’re the Queen,” she says. The connection had only come to her here, sifting through the memory of angry words and shouted accusations.   
  
(“ _Your friend the Queen- how did she get to you?_ ”)

“That, I am,” the woman purrs, stopping in the center of the room to drop a mocking little half-curtsy. “Regina.”  
  
She’s alone, unaccompanied by her gruesome faceless guards, but Belle knows won’t make the mistake of assuming her defenseless.

“It was no accident- our meeting on the road,” her voice creaks like a rusty hinge, and Belle tells herself it is from disuse and not from the threat of tears. “You meant for this to happen. All of this. You meant for me to- you knew-“

And she had wanted so badly for there to be a way for them to be together that she had stumbled blindly right into the jaws of a trap.  _True Love’s Kiss will break any curse._  How could she have been so naïve?

“Well, well, you are a clever one, aren’t you dear? I will give you credit for that.”

Belle swallows, forcing her voice to be steady, “Why are you doing this? I haven’t done anything to-“

“ _You_?” she interrupted with a sweet, mocking laugh, her voice honeyed poison. “Darling child, what makes you think this has anything to do with you?”

“Why, then?” Belle demands, “Is keeping us apart  _revenge_? Has he hurt you?”

Belle doesn’t miss the way the corners of her mouth tighten. “Consider yourself insurance,” Regina replies primly, “Don’t take it personally, dear. Although I must confess, when I heard he’d lost his head over some pretty young thing I expected…” she rakes her eyes over Belle’s haggard, filthy form and her mouth twists in a smile, “Well.”

Belle refuses to allow the words to sting. “So you’re just going to… keep me?”

Regina gestures with one elegantly manicured hand as she turns, making a lazy circuit of the perimeter of the room. As if she’s taking the air in her garden instead of inspecting the cell of her prisoner. “For now. I have a feeling you may prove yourself very useful one day. He does so like his silly deals. Imagine what he’ll pay to get his little sweetheart back.” She smiles at Belle over her shoulder, warm and coy, as if they’re sharing a secret. Belle’s stomach clenches.

“Nothing. He- he wouldn’t give you anything for me. He doesn’t want me.” She calls out to Regina’s back. The words stick in her throat, but Belle forces them out without letting herself think about them. She realizes their necessity only after they leave her lips. She won’t let herself be used to hurt him. “You should know that- isn’t it what you wanted?”

Her words freeze Regina in her tracks and for a moment Belle thinks that it’s worked, until the other woman turns revealing a smile that’s all bared teeth.

“Oh, how sweet! Are you trying to protect him?  _Him_?” She laughs, long and loud, and Belle clenches her stiff fingers into fists at her sides. Regina prowls closer until they are close enough to touch, reaching out one hand to caress the side of Belle’s face.

“Or is that heartache I hear?” Regina pouts, her voice mocking, infantile. She pinches Belle’s chin in her sharp fingers. “Poor thing, did he break your heart?

She jerks away, out of Regina’s grasp. For a moment Belle wants nothing more than to wipe that wicked smile off her face. Thinks she might even try it if the woman touches her again.

Regina makes a sickly sympathetic noise, withdrawing her hand. “Oh, you poor dear girl, you have got it bad, haven’t you? Do you have any idea what sort of creature you’ve given your heart to?”

She’s unprepared for how much the words sting, sucking in a sharp breath that sounds far too wounded to her own ears.  
  
Satisfied that her barb had found its mark, Regina grins, predatory. “Because believe me, my dear, whatever you think you know about him, it isn’t the half of it. I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl.”  
  
“I don’t care-“  
  
“Did you really think you were going to kiss him and live happily ever after? That you would change him with your  _true love_  and turn him into a charming prince?” She laughs again, drunk on her own mirth.  
  
Belle turns her back on Regina, her cheeks burning. Twisted on the woman’s wicked tongue, all her hopes suddenly sounded like the daydreams of a silly young girl.   
  
“You really should be more grateful, you know. I’ve done you a favor.”   
  
“A favor?” A strangled laugh forces its way out of Belle’s throat as she takes in her surroundings; bare stone walls with their silent rows of black lines to mark the days. If this is Regina’s favor, Belle would hate to see her wrath.  
  
“He doesn’t want the curse broken, dear.” She can hear Regina moving behind her, drawing closer until she is whispering into Belle’s ear. “He  _likes_ it.”  
  
Belle doesn’t respond, unwilling to let Regina hear how close to her heart she’s managed to strike this time.

_(“My power means more to me than you.”)_  
  
She had known it wasn’t true as he said it. For all his craft with words, Rumplestiltskin was a terrible liar. His eyes always betrayed him.   
  
That didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt.

And where was he now? Still holed up in his castle, alone with his magic and his silent rows of dusty trinkets? They were both prisoners now, in their separate cells.   
  
“You’re wrong,” she says simply, squaring her shoulders and turning back to face the woman. “I know there’s good in him- I’ve seen it.”  
  
She had not always recognized it at first, but it was there nonetheless: hidden in his shy smiles and little kindnesses. It his steadfast love for an absent son. And like a rose that bloomed in winter, that goodness was all the more precious for the fact that lifetimes of wickedness and fear had not managed to destroy it.  
  
“He’s waiting for me out there. And nothing you can say will convince me to give up on him.”

Regina taps one finger against her painted lips, eying Belle thoughtfully. “Well, in that case, I have a gift for you, my dear; a little something to pass the time while you’re my guest.”  
  
“I don’t want anything from you.”  
  
“I think you’ll want this.” She smiles. Belle is learning not to trust her smiles. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for tea.”

A cloud of purple smoke and Regina vanishes, replaced by a shape that towers over everything in the room. A full length mirror, she realizes, with an elaborately filigreed gilt-gold frame. Like Regina herself, it is beautiful but pompous, and far too ornate to be really lovely.

If the woman thinks she can shame Belle by reminding her of her haggard appearance, she’s far more shallow than Belle gave her credit for.

Still, Belle is wary. She recalls Rumplestiltskin’s castle, with its scores of silent covered mirrors, and the way he had directed his abuse at what she had thought was his own reflection. She suspects now that she knows the reason for both.  
  
The girl in the mirror is small and pale from far too little sunlight.

Before she can begin to wonder what it is she’s supposed to be seeing, the reflection swirls and changes until she realizes- her breath catching in her throat- that she is looking into the dining room of the dark castle.  
  
Afternoon light streams through the open curtains, illuminating tea set for two on the table. Everything is as if she’d only just left.   
  
“Rumple-“  
  
Her palm meets cold glass. He’s there, a dark shape in leather and crocodile-hide at the far edge of her view. She half imagines she can hear the creak of his spinning wheel as he turns it idly with one hand.  
  
She calls his name again- hadn’t he told her once that names had power- pounding the glass with her fist until her hand aches, but in the end she is not really surprised when he doesn’t hear her. That would have been too easy.  
  
Belle’s vision swims as her eyes unexpectedly fill with tears. She traces the line of his shoulders with one fingertip.

“Flimsy locks.” She startles at the sound of Regina’s voice, half-thinking that the woman has returned, before she realizes that the sound is coming from the mirror itself. As she watches, Regina strides into view.


End file.
